Young Gerber

by Friedrich Torberg

  He did not mind exactly where he struck; there were other ways open to him.

  He paid great attention to his point of departure. He chose his victim like a gourmet selecting the tastiest of game; he sought out the choicest parts of the roast, and carved it up with a relish that was satisfying in itself. He consumed those who were wholly incapable of achievement, entirely stupid, as side dishes, swallowing them just as they came to hand. They offered no stimulation, and he was not particularly concerned with them. Their written tests were easily marked “Unsatisfactory”, and to make doubly sure he followed that up with his dreaded venom-tipped arrow: the questions he asked in class as they sat at their desks which, if they went unanswered (and only then), counted towards their exam results. Otherwise he wanted nothing to do with such students, the scrapings of the barrel, and ignored them. He fixed his eye all the more keenly on the main objects marked out for destruction. Weaklings who might have collapsed at the first hurdle never to recover, hysterical students who might have done something unexpected in a sudden fit of fury, the naturally indifferent with the hide of an elephant—he steered clear of those with a sure instinct. He wanted students who were firmly based. There was a special piquancy when one of them also came of a wealthy family or had a reputation for special intelligence. In that case, those who were not equipped with either money or brains gleefully kept track of Kupfer’s progress. And there was something else that, to his advantage, set him apart from all other teachers—or rather could have set him apart if he had not taken it too far: it was a matter of total indifference to him whether his victim was male or female. He was so indifferent that even the greatest misogynists in the eighth year felt uncomfortable when he snapped at a girl student and, further stimulated by her tears, bombarded her with patronizing remarks through the entire lesson. Ultimately, however, even that helped to surround him with an armour of incorruptibility that kept off all his adversaries, including the shrewdest. God Almighty Kupfer had no weak spots; students were all alike to him…

  And he would have liked to see them all dressed alike as well. He wanted to be the only person present who was elegantly clad. Even wearing a new tie in one of his lessons was enough to earn you an “Unsatisfactory”, because that was tantamount to claiming an unseemly advantage over him. Kupfer would tolerate no such thing, and was furious with anyone who ventured to claim it. This attitude sometimes brought some idiot son of a patrician into his clutches, or an oaf wearing a deliberate grin because he enjoyed protection in high places. Kupfer, with unwavering tenacity, would wrest him from the hands that protected him and bring him to grief. Because that looked legal, it earned him the respect or even the admiration of those students who, from the first, had got themselves into a reasonably secure position by consistent diligence. But Kupfer himself preferred students who, because he seemed to like them, did not know why: the reason was that with his goodwill towards them and the latitude he allowed them, he only wanted to spur on the enslaved to new hatred, a hatred that became darker and darker and more and more helpless. So he dallied with his students, sowing envy and resentment among them, ensuring that they did not form a united front against him, playing off one against another and calculating the points he had won with cold pleasure. They served his purposes far beyond the hours of lessons. And in his lessons, their inferiority left the despicable creatures known as students with no option but to be the tools he used to bring his absolute power into action, dominating them by such means. In fact it was never clear to him for what work exactly they were to be his tools. It was at this point that the equation was reduced to zero. Infinity—not of the kind where parallels intersect—intervened in Kupfer’s calculations and made one factor stand out. The word for that factor was sense.

  Kupfer was satisfied with this solution. He thought no more about it, and did not want to put infinity to the test (sometimes it felt quite close, like a black chasm promising an unpleasant outcome if you fell into it). Nor was it necessary to do so. He carried weight all the same, or perhaps for that very reason. Class after class, young people with the blood pulsing through them, who became a rigid bulwark against all doubt at his behest, came again and again to confirm that to him with subservient nods. And he needed that confirmation, and even the smallest of the evidence of it they gave, he held the thought of them lustfully close, as excited as if he were possessing a naked, pleading woman…

  Because he had been given that confirmation again today, after a long period of abstinence, with immediacy and at full force, seasoned by a promising little episode, Professor Artur Kupfer was extremely pleased with his day. He had managed the prelude to the Gerber case excellently. “You may be one of those who shed tears afterwards,” he had told him. It had been a hint and at the same time a clever retort, and on top of that it followed on from what he had said. He could indeed have dismissed him with an even wittier play on words, since the German noun Gerber means a tanner (“Gerber, we’ll tan your hide for you,” he could have said, or something like that; tee-hee), but he kept that for another time. It did not escape him, just as Gerber would not escape him. That young Gerber! Kupfer looked forward to dealing with him like a child looking forward to a new toy; he was going to ruin him. It was not least for that reason that Kupfer had campaigned to have himself appointed class teacher for the eighth-year students. Over the years, when the teachers complained of some new misdeed of Gerber’s, declaring themselves powerless in the face of his unruly behaviour, so different from that of the other students—over the years Kupfer had always said, with insulting surprise, “It amazes me, my dear colleague, that you can’t cope with such a stupid, brazen boy as that!” And when it was pointed out to him that Gerber was by no means stupid, but by far the most intelligent of his class, if not in the entire school, nor was he brazen, he just had a way of expressing his opinion that did not belong at a school desk, and above all he was not exactly a boy but, on the contrary, so mature that it was impossible to decide to fail him, Kupfer would say dismissively, “I don’t believe it.” (He was referring to the information that a student was intelligent; the utter implausibility of this circumstance made all else an illusion.) “If I were ever to get young Gerber in my class, I’d soon bring him into line. Not that I’d wish that on him.” But he did, and now his wish had been fulfilled. Mattusch had firmly turned down the idea of carrying on as class teacher to “that unruly gang”; Rothbart, the next to be considered, had too heavy a workload; Hussak was too young, Prochaska too old—and so Kupfer became class teacher for the eighth-year students. Now they’d see what he was capable of! So, too, thought several other professors; the leniency so far shown to young Gerber went against the grain with them. They were curious to see the outcome of the duel that had been announced, and their thoughts followed Professor Artur Kupfer, who was to be judge of the case, to the eighth-year classroom… where on the very first day, young Gerber revealed his own weaknesses first by failing to pay attention, and then with an impudent interruption. So much for his famous intelligence! You fool, Kupfer would have liked to tell him, you don’t seem to have any inkling of what lies ahead of you. But he did not say it out loud. The retort he had in fact given was more elegant. And feeling rather sorry that the Gerber case might not be nearly as complicated as he had expected, Kupfer had left the classroom.

  On the stairs, he met Professor Seelig. “My dear colleague,” he said, “tell me what you really think of Gerber.”

  “Gerber? An unusually talented young man. There’s not really much left for him to do at school—”

  “Are you so sure of that?”

  “Well, I know that he doesn’t exactly shine in your subjects. But he’s probably not going to practise a profession in which he’ll need them. In other respects, however, he is—”

  “He also strikes me as impudent. I’ve heard this and that about him. You yourself said, Seelig—”

  “Oh well… that’s nothing to speak of. Yes, he’s a little wild. However—and here I speak from expe
rience, my dear Kupfer—that’s probably nothing but his natural youthful temperament. The opportunities open to him here at this school simply aren’t enough for him. Fundamentally, so far as I can judge, my dear Kupfer, it’s easy enough to get on with him, you have only to—”

  “Well, time will show!” rasped Kupfer, and he said a quick goodbye to his colleague.

  Kupfer took short steps, thinking that his slightly rocking gait was still a satisfactory test of the elasticity of his muscles. As he walked along the streets he looked straight ahead, so that he could intentionally fail to see anyone who might be expected to address him. Kupfer never returned a greeting. He was the first to greet those whose company he wanted to cultivate, and took no notice of the others—most of them were school students anyway. He ignored them, however, in such a way that they did not know whether he didn’t want to see the greeting or really hadn’t seen it. Consequently his anxious students would greet him a second and a third time and still get no reaction. However, if one of them did not try to greet him at all, Captain Kupfer immediately took him to task, and disciplinary procedures followed.

  Kupfer had reached his home. The building was in a narrow alley off the city centre, and his first-floor apartment belonged to a widowed baroness. Her husband, a holder of high military rank, had fallen in the Great War, and ever since then she had worn black and cut herself off increasingly from the outside world. When word got around that for financial reasons she was thinking of letting three of her six rooms to a tenant, she was bombarded with enticing applications, for her exquisite taste in the pre-war years was famous. Kupfer won the day in the face of all rivals. Perhaps his former rank of captain, which he brought into play to good effect in applying, helped him. Perhaps the baroness hoped that in this former officer she might find a friend who would satisfy her need for reminiscence. Kupfer moved into the rooms, and maintaining them put him to considerable expense. As he had inherited money and was a bachelor, however, he could afford the rooms, could even afford more when, after a while, the baroness wanted to sell him their furnishings. The old lady misinterpreted the trouble he was taking with her, and made gentle overtures of friendship. But soon she was repelled by his boastful, hollow nature, and now she lived entirely retired from the world. The one thing she asked him for was permission to pass through his rooms while he was out, and Kupfer agreed.

  Now the three rooms were his alone. He had plain wallpaper hung on the walls of the smallest and made it his study. In case his own taste spoilt anything, he emphasized simplicity. He might almost have succeeded if the bay window had not been adorned by a little rococo table on which lay the manuscript of his descriptive-geometry textbook plus exercises, in four parts, carefully kept in heavy, red plush folders, and the first edition of the books themselves, bound in silk. Another folder contained letters of appreciation and other papers showing the author in a good light. The crowning touch was a framed photograph of Kupfer in a thoughtful pose. In the middle of the room there was an oval table with an oilcloth cover, surrounded by brown wooden chairs, against one wall a sofa and against another a cupboard containing all Kupfer’s mathematical instruments. He also kept his library in this room; he had had shelves built in along one wall and provided with a curtain. The curtain was never more than half drawn, and revealed his books: all the classics and their contemporaries, many titles in French, a de luxe edition of Schopenhauer in which the passages dealing with vanity were marked in red, several works on social policy, here and there choice editions of very modern writers, but otherwise little by living authors (because the extent of their importance could not be known for certain), apart from the works to be found on station bookstalls that did not oblige the reader to form an opinion of them. The pages of all the books had been cut, many bought in antiquarian bookshops had thus already been read—for the rest, the volumes stood side by side at random and unclassified. The idea was to make it look as if the library was much used, and above all to convey an impression of artistic confusion. For, one day, Artur Kupfer had decided to be bohemian. He resolved to remind himself daily how good it felt, after the rigid, boring rules and regulations of school, to bathe in the waters of informality, which he considered suited his real nature much better! Kupfer took meticulous care to let disorder reign in his study. The desk was heavily laden with colourful heaps of books, newspapers, letters, exercise books and loose sheets of paper. He snapped at the cleaner if she tidied the piles of material while she was dusting, or if she placed the ruler neatly beside his writing case instead of letting it peep out of the pages of an illustrated magazine, from which he was in the habit of taking it, or if she failed to leave the ashtray, the calendar, the blotting pad and all other items in the places where it was their daily purpose not to belong. (Places and objects were changed around at certain intervals of time.) The drawers of his desk were also very untidy. And when a visitor asked to see his study, Kupfer would say, “Oh, I’m quite ashamed to take you in there, it’s in terrible disorder. I really think I shall have to fire the cleaning lady.”

  Kupfer had changed nothing in the appearance of the other two rooms, except that in the salon, under the curved Saracen sabre that hung on the wall flanked by two Turkish slippers, there were now three photographs of Kupfer. They showed Kupfer in uniform, Kupfer in riding dress on horseback, and Kupfer attired for a game of tennis. Otherwise the rooms had retained all their old atmosphere of aristocratic gloom, all the distinguished calm with which Kupfer’s notions did not seem to be at home. When Kupfer had drawn the heavy curtains in the evening, and walked about the rooms in the muted light of a lamp in a niche, he thought, with a chilly shudder, that he felt the cold breath of their nobility. Then he took off his glasses, put a monocle in his eye, stood in front of the heavily framed wall mirror with a cigarette casually held in the corner of his mouth, and realized that he suited this place very well, and should really have come into the world as Artur Maria Baron von Kupfer somewhere in Pomerania, instead of being the son of an respectable if narrow-minded provincial in Mährisch Trübau, and the old baroness now sleeping in the other half of the apartment ought to have been his mother. Then there would have been a different kind of attraction in the fact that she could not hear prostitutes moaning in transports of lust (as specified in their tariff) in the broad, soft bed in his bedroom. They were seldom street-walkers—usually they were barmaids, dancers, cocottes who did not offer their bodies immediately (they liked to have their hands kissed first), but allowed a kind of wooing to enter the game of their work. As far as Kupfer was concerned, there was an end to all that the moment they set foot in his apartment. A girl who let herself sink into one of his comfortable armchairs cheerfully or with sultry sensuality, prepared to continue the game to its predestined end, was summarily ordered by Kupfer to undress in order to reach that end by the means that desires verging on the sick suggested: she must kneel before him, for instance, begging him to take her body as a penance that she deserved. If she objected, or demanded a higher price for the extra play-acting, he would chase her out of the house with pretended composure. Generally, however, the girls shrugged their shoulders and complied with Kupfer’s wishes…

  Such nights (and they were followed by a sense of shame next morning, but very muted and as if coming from far away) were the only means he had of confirming his godlike omnipotence. Beyond that it failed dismally. He had never had a real lover. After brief attempts, he had realized that ultimately there was no prospect of such a thing, and withdrew. Indeed, he realized with a precision that was nearly always correct just where his limits lay. He knew that as soon as he was outside his sphere of influence, the school, he could not impress anyone in any way. A layman has little respect for knowledge that does not interest him. The fact that he could construct the regular section of a prism by discovering its trace points and by using affinity was not going to fill many people with awe-stricken respect. He knew that. And because he could offer nothing else, he had to develop his personality as a teacher,
making it so feared that it overshadowed and determined his personality as a private individual. Not the other way around. He was not the man Artur Kupfer who assumed the profession of a professor of mathematics, he was the professor of mathematics—the Professor of Mathematics—who assumed the character of Artur Kupfer. He did not practise his profession but was practised by it. Its radiance surrounded him at the café table where, with familiarity and heavy humour that he had learnt by heart, he sought the approval and admiration of average citizens, some of them the parents of students whom he favoured. It glittered around him in a club or association where he could debate without presumption and with undemanding if nondescript ingenuity. A glint of the same radiance still danced around him when he was lying on the beach at the seaside, and the waves, seeing it, whispered to one another: there lies Professor Artur Kupfer, private individual…

  He was no god to other people, but still, they knew that he was treated as a god somewhere. And now it was a question of whether that at least impressed them. Where it did, Kupfer became, if not exactly more popular, at least more welcome and in a way, on occasion, more interesting company. Where it did not, people turned their backs on him with pity and contempt, saying, if they were going to bother to mention him at all, “Oh, that idiot!” There were some who even said, “That villain.” And he concluded, from the fact that they could say it with impunity, that high-school study came entirely to an end with the final examination. So he enjoyed his allotted time with his students to the full, clutching it and squeezing out of it all the satisfaction that was denied him afterwards—squeezing it until the blood came.

  Professor Artur Kupfer, known to his students as God Almighty Kupfer, had come to see, by dint of clear thinking, that when a command to “sit down” no longer carried such weight, the divine and absolute power of his reign came to an end. He was a god of limited staying power. But where he clung on, he clung like a bur.